Icons have been used for many years in computer systems to display information to users. Icons are images that are used to represent items such as files, folders, shortcuts, applications, documents, tasks, and commands throughout a computer operating system such as MICROSOFT WINDOWS™, a product of the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash. Icons are currently used in toolbars, dialog boxes, menus, and numerous other locations in file management systems such as Windows Explorer, also a product of the Microsoft Corporation. Icons are usually stored as static bitmaps, but dynamic icon handlers may also be written to generate icons dynamically.
Currently, two types of icons are used to represent items. These two types include traditional icons and thumbnail icons. Whereas traditional icons are typically shared across files and are determined per type, thumbnails are determined per item and are not shared across files. A traditional icon is composed of two components including an icon image and a status overlay. The icon image forms the basis of the traditional icon. The status overlay is used to convey status information about the item. It is used, for example, to display the shortcut overlay.
A thumbnail icon is a particular type of icon displaying an image generated based on the contents of the underlying item. For example, an icon for an image file that actually looks like the image itself is a thumbnail of the image file. Thumbnail icons may also include an overlay. Thumbnail icons may be dynamically generated by code run on a user computer, although the generated image may be cached.
Although existing operating systems offer thumbnails, these thumbnails are not well integrated into existing file management systems such as Windows Explorer. As a result, the thumbnail feature is not as useful as it could be. A user has to go to a special “thumbnails view” to see thumbnail icons today, even for objects having thumbnail icons that would be visually effective at a smaller size, such as photographs. When in the thumbnails view of existing systems, icons for objects without thumbnails appear small and inadequate. The user typically cannot see extra information about each file in thumbnails view as the user can in other views such as tile view or details view. Accordingly, the user is often forced to choose between viewing thumbnails and viewing other important information.
Because the thumbnails feature is remote and not extensively utilized, little incentive exists for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to write thumbnail generators, When ISVs do write the thumbnail generators, they are unlikely to invest in making the thumbnail generators powerful. As a result, many existing application produce thumbnails of poor quality. Generally, since thumbnails are pictures, it is difficult to determine what type of item underlies a thumbnail icon. Furthermore, while traditional icons appear instantly, thumbnail icons are typically noticeably slow to appear because they were not generated in advance.
With traditional icons, overlays are often used as a primary or only indication of information about an item underlying an icon. However, overlays do not reliably appear. If multiple states need to be shown, overlays will only show the highest priority state and will ignore others since no more than one overlay may be shown at a time. Overlays are difficult to recognize at small icon sizes, such as the sizes generally used in list or details mode. Overlays have additional drawbacks including the ability to be readily imitated and used in an unauthorized manner. A further limitation is the inaccessibility of overlays to the visually-impaired. A user navigating with the keyboard and using a narrator hears a name and type of each file as the file is selected, but is not given any information about a state that the overlay represents. Additionally, overlays are used inconsistently to convey information about the state of a file.